BHHH2 Hash Trash Run #1340 Goa Gajah

Happy Trails To Me

To quote a notorious Jewish Philosopher with a beard and sandals, “It’s good to be back” or to quote K. Richards, another even more notorious philosopher after falling out of a palm tree in Tahiti and waking up in New Zealand with titanium screws holding his cranium on: “It’s good to be anywhere”. I don’t think I mixed up those two chaps and their profundities. Was it J.C. in N.Z. with screws in his skull? Keef resurrected? Tidak apa apa (translation: “no what what”). After two weeks of 5 degree C. lows, 100 kph gusts, ten dollar beers and sitting around in houses, offices, bars and restaurants in jumper, jacket, scarf and trackie-dacks-under-the-trews in the exotic, well-heated Perth indoors, a stumble around the Goa Gajah area and a few (har) beers was just what the doctor ordered, just tickety boo. I’m here to tell ya.

We drove the alternative route last week to G.G., in other words we followed the directions of a pleasant sounding young lady named Vera with an American accent on a GPS app in a tablet device. This worked a treat or would have done if we had actually listened to her directions instead of pissing ourselves laughing and missing turns because of her Indonesian name pronunciation, which made Blahbatu sound something like “blahdy blahdy blah” and Pantai Sabah like “pantie suburbs”. Anyhow, we got there.

Once again a decent sized crowd of 75–odd persons (in all senses) left the G.G. car park with Muddy Man’s advice ringing our ears: an hour’s walk on the short, two on the long. Goa Gajah always proves to be an interesting run. It has wildly varying episodes – some blighted with garbage and entire psychiatric conventions of barely controlled vehicular lunacy bearing down on us on manically crowded jalans, or peaceful countryside scenes of deep green, calm and balm to both the eye and mind. This also depends on the direction we take. Last week the group I was running with were surprised, even shocked (I was anyway), to find ourselves as far away as Pejeng. “How did we end up here?” I blurted spotting a sign on a warung. “I dunno about you but I jogged and ran mostly” a well known smarty pants replied. This didn’t look good for our hour long short.

Fortunately it was overcast and a cool drizzle of rain kept us from overheating. But realizing we were an over an hour out and far from home and beer, I was in a bit more of a hurry than I had been up to then. I looked up in my haste and there was an older buleh tourist walking past me on the other side of the road who was a dead ringer for Clint Eastwood. Does this ever happen to you? Maybe it’s just me hallucinating (again), but I swear I have caught glimpses of celebrities etc. on the Hash and in Bali in general as diverse as Julia Roberts, David Attenborough, Bowie (albeit not very recently), Tony Abbott – it’s not impossible. Even if I had run smack into the grimacing, glinting one himself wearing a poncho and six guns whistling a Hugh Montenegro theme tune, I was so beer thirsty I would have said “Clint, mate. ‘Hacksaw Ridge’, loved it, gotta run…”

It was indeed an hour and forty minutes by the time I was slaking a mighty thirst back at the truck. “Did you do the long?” inquired Mudflaps. “No, but it feels like it.” What the hell, I was back on Bali Hash 2 pleasantly knackered, hoisting beers, exchanging jokes, jabs, jests, japes and hilarity with me Hash mates, not freezing my arse off and worrying about what petty law I might be breaking – happy as Larry the Clam in his happy place. A boisterous circle followed in which virgins were merrily slaughtered, Nightjar remembered something historically hysterical, Dancing Queen told a joke that most people understood (a photo was taken of this for posterity), Little Johnny told his parents that he saw Dad in bed with the maid doing what Mum and Uncle Dennis were doing at the beach house last summer and race horses with names such as Neil Amblowmie, Anita Hanjaab, Oil Beef Hooked and Hoof Hearted were banned from entering the Melbourne Cup.